Four short links: 21 August 2013

Groklaw - Forced Exposure ~pj -- I feel like that now, knowing that persons I don't know can paw through all my thoughts and hopes and plans in my emails with you. I had a family member who was supposed to be in the World Trade Center that morning, and when I watched on live television the buildings go down with living beings inside, I didn't know that she had been late that day and so was safe. Does it matter, though, if you knew anyone specifically, as we watched fellow human beings hold hands and jump out of windows of skyscrapers to a certain death below or watched the buildings crumble into dust, knowing there were so many people just like us being turned into dust as well? And part of my anguish was that there were people in the world willing to do that to other people, fellow human beings, people they didn't even know, civilians uninvolved in any war. But it's important, because the point of the book is that privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance:

BBC News - David Miranda in legal challenge over seized data -- But the home secretary said: "I think that it's absolutely right that if the police believe that somebody is in possession of highly sensitive stolen information that could help terrorists, that could risk lives, or lead to a potential loss of life, that the police are able to act, and that's what the law enables them to do."

MeeGo Startup Jolla Closes Pre-Sales Campaign For Its First Phone, Booking Order ... -- Jolla , the Finnish startup comprised of ex-Nokians thats building its own MeeGo-based smartphone platform and phone hardware has closed out a pre-sales campaign for the device it showed off in May . Thing is, its not saying how many phones are in this first pre-order batch so its not really saying very much about the level of demand its seeing (or not seeing). Although Jolla is not giving out the exact number of devices prebooked it can be said that the size of the production batch for a mobile device vendor of this size is typically 50,000 units, a Jolla spokesperson said. Having to compete with only startup resources is a huge ask (Jollas Sailfish OS has attracted a commitment from an alliance of investors to contribute $259 million to help it build out the ecosystem however that financing was not committed as an upfront payment so its unclear how much has been contributed to date).